Don’t look down

Valli Moosa, former environment minister and deputy chair of the Presidential Commission on Climate Change, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts From The Edge that South Africa’s transition to green technology is inevitable. “Nobody wants to invest in fossil fuels,” he says. The Commission is charged with negotiating a “just transition” from our dependence on coal to a net zero carbon economy by 2050. Moosa is relaxed about the transition. “You’re going to need a degree of gas,” he says Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe is “only doing his job” by speaking up for the coal industry: the investors and workers are his constituency and the protests at offshore seismic surveys for oil or gas are passing shows. Very soon, he reckons, renewables will be clearly cheaper than fossil fuels and current debates will simply be academic.